BROOKE, Sir John (1575-1660), of Dean’s Yard, Westminster and Heckington, Lincs.

Brooke’s father, a younger son of the 9th Lord Cobham and twice MP for Kent, left him a third share of his lands under gavelkind. C142/235/89. Following the example of his elder brother Calisthenes, Brooke began life as a soldier, serving as a captain in France, the Netherlands and Ireland. However, ‘afraid of my employment failing’, he made his way to Court, and by 1599 had entered the queen’s service, probably with the help of (Sir) Robert Cecil†. CSP Dom. 1595-7, p. 445. As commander of the Middlesex levies, he was subsequently responsible for the safe custody of those implicated in Essex’s rising. In May 1603 he was present at the queen’s funeral as one of the official mourners. APC, 1600-1, p. 172; LC2/4/4, f. 47v.

Brooke was eager to obtain a seat in the first Jacobean Parliament to defend the family interests after the attainder of his cousin, the 11th Lord Cobham. At the general election of 1604 Sir John Holles*, whom he greatly admired, recommended him to Sir Percival Willoughby* for Tamworth in Staffordshire, but without success. He tried again in the following year when a seat fell vacant at Queenborough, in Kent. The borough was under the control of his ‘kinsman and old acquaintance’ Sir Edward Hoby*, who promised him ‘all the kindness I could show’, but in the event the place went to another. C. Brydges, duchess of Chandos, Willoughby Fam. ed. A.C. Wood, 36; HMC Hatfield, xvii. 335. Hence it was only as a witness that he could attend the proceedings on the bill to confirm Cobham’s attainder. HMC Hatfield, xv. 273; CJ, i. 310b; HLRO, O.A. 3 Jas.I, c. 6; 7 Jas.I, c. 18.

Having retired from military service, Brooke, now a gentleman of the privy chamber, devoted his energies instead to colonial and commercial ventures. He may not have made use of the licence to travel which he was granted in 1609, but in the following year he set sail with Sir Thomas Roe* for Guiana, and he later encouraged Luke Fox in his search for the North-West Passage, though he himself did not join the Company. SO3/4; HMC Downshire, ii. 251; Brown, ii. 834. In April 1611 he bought the rights to a pension of £200 a year for life from the earl of Dunfermline, chancellor of Scotland, and soon afterwards retired from his position at Court. CSP Dom. 1611-18, pp. 22, 33. He was considered for appointment as ambassador to the Great Mogul in October 1614 by the East India Company, but they eventually decided in favour of Roe. CSP Col. E.I. 1513-1616, p. 326.

In 1614 Brooke was returned for Gatton in Surrey on the interest of his distant kinsman, lord admiral Nottingham (Charles Howard†). Carew Letters ed. J. Maclean (Cam. Soc. lxxvi), 12. When Parliament met he was appointed to manage the conference with the Lords on the Palatine marriage settlement (14 Apr.) and to consider three private bills, one of them concerning the sale of lands in Lincolnshire by his brother-in-law Sir Edward Heron (20 May). Procs. 1614 (Commons), 82, 294; Lincs. Peds. (Harl. Soc. li), 489. Brooke’s only recorded speech during the Addled Parliament concerned the value of these lands. Ibid. 294. Shortly after the dissolution he bought the lieutenancy of Dover Castle from Sir Robert Brett*, but sold it on to Sir Thomas Hammon* for £1,100 a year later. C2/Jas.I/H13/22; C54/2162/13. He then invested in the alum industry, buying the rights to half of the profits of a patent held by Sir John Bourchier* in May 1615, and teaming up with a projector, Thomas Russell, who promised a new technique to increase production. E214/933. In 1617 Brooke and Russell approached another alum patentee, Sir Arthur Ingram* whose works at Gisborough were in difficulty. New terms were negotiated, in which Ingram convinced the lord treasurer, the 1st earl of Suffolk, to write off £13,000 he owed to the Crown, on the strength of the returns promised by the scheme. Brooke visited Gisborough in September 1618, but by this time the project had failed, and he bargained to sell his interest back to Bourchier. A.F. Upton, Sir Arthur Ingram, 122-4; HMC Var. viii. 12, 14. In 1619 when Suffolk was attainted for corruption Brooke gave evidence concerning the alum contract, having himself escaped from the scheme without blame. Add. 12497, f. 82v. As one of the patentees for Virginia he served on the New England Council in 1620. Recs. Virg. Co. iii. 624.

At the next general election Brooke was nominated by Suffolk’s son-in-law, Lord (William†) Knollys, for a seat at Oxford, where Knollys was high steward. He was named to ten committees, including those for privileges (5 Feb. 1621), the subsidy bill (7 Mar.) and for drafting a bill to prevent the export of ordnance (26 March). CJ, i. 507b, 544a, 572b. In his only known speech, in committee on 21 Apr., he described Sir Richard Wigmore’s patent for the monopoly of fish imports as ‘a great grievance to all the outport towns of England’. Nicholas, Procs. 1621, i. 295. After the recess, Brooke was one of the courtiers appointed on 3 Dec. to present the address against the Spanish Match to the king. CJ, i. 657b. It is not known whether Brooke tried to get a seat in the 1624 Parliament. Undeterred by his experiences with the alum project, or by the Monopolies Act which had finally received the Royal Assent, Brooke joined with Bourchier, Russell, and five other partners, to procure a patent for ‘making hard soap with berila’ in May 1624. CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 256. He was returned to Parliament for the Wiltshire borough of Bedwyn in 1625, perhaps through his connection with the descendants of the earl of Hertford, whom he had accompanied to Brussels in 1605. He was named to only one committee, for a bill to prevent the export of wool (27 June 1625) and made no recorded speeches. Procs. 1625, p. 252. In 1626 Brooke was nominated at Scarborough by the duke of Buckingham, whose client and trusted messenger he had been since at least 1621; however, he was rejected by the town. Procs. 1626, iv. 250-1; Harl. 7000, f. 84; Cabala sive Scrinia Sacra, 264.

In April 1626 Brooke and Russell made a last-ditch attempt to revive the alum project, and were supported by a royal Proclamation ‘for the better making of saltpetre’. CSP Dom. 1627-8, pp. 2, 303. When this finally failed Brooke petitioned the Crown revenue commissioners in 1627, ‘desiring that forasmuch as he had now surrendered his old patent of the alum works upon promise that he should be paid the arrearages of his pension, which is £800 per annum’, he should receive £4,475 then owing. Univ. of London, Goldsmiths ms 195, ii. ff. 61, 67v; SP16/180/18. After the chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Richard Weston*, had agreed to let him have £4,000, the payment of £1,000 per annum was ordered for four years. SP16/148/37. In the following year he was appointed to the Council of War. CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 563. He was nominated for a seat at Reading by Knollys in 1628, but was rejected once again. Reading Recs. ed. J.M. Guilding, ii. 386.

In 1632 Brooke joined with Theophilus Howard*, 2nd earl of Suffolk, and the lord chief justice, Sir Robert Heath*, to purchase an interest in a tin mine at Kentwyn, Cornwall. CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 358. By the mid-1630s he had also invested in the aristocratic obsession with the drainage of the Fens, contributing towards the 1st earl of Lindsey’s scheme for the Lincolnshire ‘level’, and acting as a local sewer commissioner. CSP Dom. 1634-5, p. 29; 1637, p. 365. He carried the standard in the Bishops’ War of 1639, and represented the Westmorland constituency of Appleby in the Long Parliament until disabled as a royalist. As heir male of the family on the death of his cousin Sir William Brooke* he was created Baron Cobham, though he had already sold what was left of his Kentish estates to the duke of Richmond, with whom he often stayed at Cobham Hall. E. Cust, ‘James Duke of Lennox and Richmond, of Cobham Hall’, Arch. Cant. xii. 96. His Lincolnshire property was heavily mortgaged, and he compounded for his delinquency at £1,300. The last of the Kentish Brookes, the old Elizabethan courtier almost survived to witness the Restoration, but he was buried at Wakerley in Northamptonshire on 20 May 1660. No will or letters of administration have been found. W.A. Scott-Robertson, ‘Wills rel. to Cobham Hall’, Arch. Cant. xi. 206-7.